Three Stages of Amazement One The modern marriage has two states, plateau and precipice, and in the winter of our recent crisis—with markets plummeting and even rich folks crying poor; with the dark reign of one tinsel president finally ending, and the promised hope of a new man about to start; yes, with hope rising like a cockamamie kite and fear more common than love—Charlie Pepper forgot his wife.

He didn’t mean to. That much Lena knew. She paused at the kitchen sink on New Year’s Eve morning, the last day of the lousiest year of their lives, and considered what she needed and what she knew. The crab needed to come out of the fridge. What about butter? She’d forgotten candles. She needed another bag of ice. It had been a year since they’d even thought about hosting a dinner. Since then the world fell down one black hole and she and Charlie fell down another; as yet no one had come back. But Obama was taking over in twenty days and Lena had hope. She also had a sick baby and no lettuce. And if years ago Lena and Charlie promised that their hearts would always be in sync, well, it was a fool’s promise, wasn’t it? For now their hearts were a cacophony of chuffing and banging, with Charlie’s motor driving like a great battleship and hers a bubbling alchemist’s pot. Then there were the children’s hearts: Theo’s drum sounded like quick boots pounding up the stairs, while Willa’s was more skittish, the flap-flap of gossamer wings. And there was a third heart so silent it took away sound.

“Usted está mutada en el burro, tiene que seguir,” Glo called, on her way out the door after tending Willa half the night so Lena could sleep. “You’re on the burro, you might as well go.”

In quick-fire Spanish, Lena answered, hoisting the baby onto her shoulder. “The burro is strong. Now why can’t he have an extra pair of hands?”

Glo chuckled, her girlish, brown fingers covering her mouth. Seven years ago, Glo crossed the border at night led by a coyote, leaving her two kids and her mother behind in Guatemala. Every Sunday Glo called home, and sometimes her youngest, Rosella, refused to speak to her. Yet here she was talking of Lena’s burros. It was life, this crazy life, and if you didn’t laugh it broke you. It broke you anyway, but it was better if you laughed.

All day Lena made lists and as she carried Willa up the stairs she started a new one. Butter, candles, ice. If, while working feverishly, Charlie forgot her and the kids, it was never for long. He forgot them repeatedly, at moments, across days, in time. Lena, five years younger but dog-aged in matters of love, likewise misplaced Charlie, with all the worry and push she had to nudge up the road. I ought to write it down: butter, candles, ice, she thought, when Willa started coughing again. Lena ran. Charlie was forty-seven, she was forty-two. They had five years between them and eight years of marriage to their backs and to say they were committed was to say they were in deep.

Yet they missed each other.

And Lena wanted—oh, she wanted—to be touched inside her bones. But Charlie was elsewhere—it might be Uganda, or Boston, or an hour south at the office, or asleep in the bed beside her. Dear Charlie, grinding his jaw.

“Theo,” Lena called, grabbing the newspaper as she pushed down the hall on her heels. “I’ll have the door closed. Come find me, honey. Don’t shout.”

She kicked the bathroom door shut and flipped on the shower. As it roared to life, Lena whispered into Willa’s tiny ear, “That’s it, breathe.”

Willa, ten months old, weighed just eleven pounds. In her short life she had been to the hospital a dozen times. With pneumonia, seizures, surgeries, not to mention those four months at the start. The doctors talked gravely of cognitive delays, and worse. Cerebral palsy was a term sometimes used. Lena stopped her ears. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe, it was that believing took her only so far. What Willa needed, Lena felt sure, was time. Lena’s job was to seize time.

As the steam built, Lena first stripped Willa to her diaper, then peeled off her own sweats down to her panties. Making a bed of towels on the tiled floor, she sat—for the first time all morning—with her knees bent, her back against the wall, showing the cabinets her real face, the face she let no one see. Lena Rusch was irreverent, good-looking, plucky. She had a fine if exhausted brain. This meant she couldn’t always recall the lists she made, or the ends and even the middles of her sentences, but she always started out with a bang. She was a romantic and, worse, an optimist. Fate had forced her to be practical and stolid, too. The two sides rubbed. She was crazy for her children, her friends, chocolate, and news of any kind. She might be crazy for Charlie, too, if she came across him in the daylight once in a while. In other words, Lena Rusch was extraordinarily ordinary: she worked and reared and hardly slept; she began each day prepared for a surprise.

Preemies did best skin to skin. Lena laid Willa’s bare chest like a cloth over her own, and making sure her baby was upright with the world, she gently drummed on the tiny back. Willa moaned, burrowing her face in the cave of Lena’s neck. “Sweetheart,” Lena murmured. “Come on, come on.”

“There you are!” Jesse cried, throwing open the door. They were sisters, and though Jesse was much, much younger, they entered rooms as their mother had taught them, like a storm. “I’ve been shouting a lung out downstairs. Theo finally—”

“Shut the door, you noodle! You’re letting out the steam!”

Jesse did as she was told. But between the blasting shower and the stifling heat, she wouldn’t stay long. “What? Is she sick again?” Jesse folded her arms. “Poor pup. Poor you.”

“Nah. We’re fine.”

Technically they were only half sisters. Jesse, sixteen years Lena’s junior, was the product of a love affair their mother had, one of many, after Lena’s father died. She was as long-limbed and blonde as Lena was curvy and dark. Their mother told everyone that Jesse was helping out with the children until she found a job, but Jesse was a child herself.

“So. What are you wearing tonight?” she asked.

Lena tipped her head against the wall and laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Oh, yes.” Lena smiled wistfully. It wasn’t so long ago (in truth, it felt like a minute) that Lena was the one flying out the door to get wasted at high school parties while little Jesse flapped her hands from her bouncy seat. And while that was long ago, Jesse still manipulated like a child—openly, as if she were the only one playing for keeps. Sighing, Lena rubbed circles in Willa’s back. “I gave the black dress to Glo.”

“You what? You gave it to the nanny?”

“Not nanny. Glo.”

“Christ, Lean.”

Truthfully, Lena would have given Gloria Angelica Cardenas anything—anything—for Glo saved Lena’s sanity every single day. And besides, the rapture on Glo’s face when Lena handed her the box was worth a hundred, maybe a thousand, black dresses. Lena looked up at Jesse, trying to decide if she should take the trouble to explain. But Jesse was looking at herself in the mirror, continuing that frank, daily conversation women have with their faces. “Ugh. New Year’s Eve and no guy. I hate my life!”

“Fa.”

Jesse turned. “OK, Miss Veteran. When. When is he going to show up?”

Lena’s grinned slyly. “They always do.”

At last Willa coughed, good and wet. It was enough. Jesse escaped, slamming the door behind her, as Lena put Willa to her breast. They would be there another hour. With one arm hooked under the baby, Lena spread the newspaper across her knees, where the steamy ink would stain her black. She didn’t care. This was the moment she’d been waiting for—her reward being four full pages in the New York Times on Bernie Madoff and his colossal Ponzi scheme. Lena was in awe of Madoff, who, by promising steady returns of eighteen percent, had perpetrated the largest stock fraud in history. He’d swindled at every level, from the Wall Street fat cats, to relatives, to Palm Beach society, to grieving Jewish widows, to the mistress who claimed he had a small penis, to Mort Zuckerman, the media titan, to Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor, to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Yet in the photo on the front page Madoff showed no remorse. He walked the streets, a Jew with a George Washington haircut; he smiled like a shark for the paparazzi.

Her guests arrived all at once. They tossed their coats over the banister and pressed wine and chocolate into Lena’s hands. There was much hugging. Lena made a robust effort to herd them into the living room, but they ignored her, following her into the small kitchen, where they grouped like stupid, happy cows.

“Get the fuck out of here!” she cried, laughing helplessly, but they only smiled and kept on talking. These were the beloveds: Lee Swanson, showing off his new baby blue suede jacket, and Josh Klein, Charlie’s roommates from college, and Sandy, Josh’s wife. When Jesse appeared, having spent the afternoon talking on the phone, tweeting, Facebooking, and smoking a little grass, she made a beeline for Swanson, to tell him that his jacket was his best awful. Laughing, they all agreed.

Meanwhile Lena had four things she couldn’t remember and perhaps one of them was burning in the oven. She was about to check when Vi arrived. Violet Vesuvio, dear Vi, was Lena’s flag of joy, her best friend since they were sixteen, the year they each lost their virginity, one to a girl and one to a boy.

“Oh, god. The fucking traffic.” Vi gripped Lena’s shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “What. What is it?”

Lena wrinkled her nose. It had been a day.

“All right. We can fix this,” Vi said. “Start at the beginning. What have you been eating?”

Lena had a deep, womanly, shit-kicking laugh. “Oh, hi, Maude.” Turning, she greeted Vi’s new girlfriend, who appeared to be in costume, a men’s gray suit and fedora. “You look—”

“Rakish?” Maude tipped her head. Maude was a painter, a decent one; her oversize portraits sold best in Santa Fe and Miami. She was large-boned, mannish, with a small, pretty nose. Vi thought she was tremendous.

“Yes, rakish,” agreed Lena, and though undecided about Maude, she hugged her warmly. Everyone was here; they only lacked Charlie. For the next half hour, as she threw dinner together, Lena kept an anxious eye on the door. And when at last Charlie walked through it, she was so startled she nearly dropped a bowl. She plowed into him, backing them into the hall.

“Well, Doctor, I do like to see your face at the end of the year. Remind me, what’s your name?”

“Lena’s husband,” Charlie said, kissing her quickly. He’d been pushing toward this moment for more than two hours in traffic. But now that it was here, and Lena was beside him, Charlie couldn’t slow his molecules enough to enjoy her. Instead, he dropped the bags of butter, lettuce, and ice she’d asked for on the floor. “Hey. Can I talk to you a sec?”

“Sure.” Lena fiddled with his collar. She was pretending to ignore the gray hollows under his eyes and the smudge on his coat. What she wanted was a good kiss. A good kiss could restore them. Didn’t he know? A good kiss could sail them into the New Year just fine. But even as she longed for this, they headed in another direction—she watched with wonder, seeing them go—and instead of saying something romantic she asked, “Did you get the champagne?”

“Damn.”

“It’s OK. I screwed up on the groceries, but I remembered the booze!”

“Charged it?”

“Course.” She frowned. Now, why ask a thing like that? She shook her head and all but moaned. “Charlie, I want it to be … lovely. One night. Can it be lovely?”

“It is.”

She tried her best to smile. “All right. What do you want to tell me?”

For two hours fighting the traffic on 280, Charlie had practiced his lines. I got a call today, out of the blue. He had his speech ready and there would be no deep kisses until he got the words out. Until he came clean. But the way she was looking at him, with those yearning green eyes, well, you’d have to be heartless.

“You look great,” he said, and meant it. The truth was she looked wan and her hair seemed sort of wild. But even a wan, wild-haired Lena was sweet relief.

Lena patted her hair where Charlie’s gaze landed. Did she really look like hell? She wanted so much from the night. If only desire were enough to take them there. “OK,” she declared, brushing his lips with hers. “The bar first, then I need five chairs.”

Klein wiped his plate clean with a hunk of bread. “God, this is good. Lena, what’d you put in the crab?”

“Butter and butter. A touch of garlic.”

“No, something else.”

“Jalapeño. The thinnest of slivers.”

“Jalapeño! You are a witch, Lena-love. Pass that bowl.”

Lena, because she was nursing, had just the one glass, but it burned nicely in her cheeks and in the tops of her ears. She passed the crab to Klein on her right and the salad to Swanson on her left. Now where was Charlie? She looked down the long table, past the winking candles and rosy faces, to the opposite end. He wasn’t there. The thought of Charlie absent caught in Lena’s throat. And just like that she knew something had happened—something more.

She moved a candlestick aside, the panic rising—as if her heart had been zapped and the ceiling dropped lower. Where was he? From the far end of the table Sandy caught Lena’s eye. Sandy was a gynecologist, not a shrink, but since the twins’ birth she’d made it her business to keep tabs on Lena. Worse, Lena knew from Vi that Sandy believed that had she been the doc on call she could have prevented the twins’ early delivery. It was more than Lena could stand. The hubris. The exposed nerve. It wasn’t only her fatigue or pride that Lena didn’t want poked. It was a question of luck and unluck—and the tenderest, most unspeakable sorrow. It was, finally, a question of the heart. Lena’s heart was tired. And a tired heart is a susceptible one.

“Lena, help me here with Swanny,” called Sandy. “The eshag thinks he can cure a chronic sinus infection with amoxicillin!” Eshag was Sandy’s favorite word—Armenian for ass—but she applied it to all her favorites. “See that, Swanny—Lena agrees. Listen to me, esh: you have to go in there with napalm.”

Lena tried to stand but Josh Klein took her hand and pulled her into her seat. “Don’t even think about it,” he said kindly. In the wife department, Josh Klein considered Charlie one lucky dog. Then, too, with the market down fifty percent and no bottom in sight, Klein had been wondering all evening if this wasn’t the end of the world. He decided that was OK. It was OK if the world ended. He would chat with Lena, drink a little more and see if the forecast changed. Last year he’d brought Lena pots of caviar left over from the Goldman Sachs holiday party. This year couldn’t have been more different. A week before Christmas, he’d been forced to fire half of his department—guys and women he’d brought along. His dreams were haunted by their faces. And so Klein filled his and Lena’s glasses to the top. “Talk to me. Where were we?”

Lena smiled dimly.

“Come on, Helena. Pretend there’s no kids, no worries, sex forever. Money? Well, let’s leave money out of it.” Klein squeezed her hand. “What are you excited about? Is it Obama? Of course you love him. You and everyone are in love. The man is going to kill what’s left of the markets, but let’s not go there either. No, not Obama. Too shiny, too glorified. Let’s talk about a real skunk. Bernie—Bernie Madoff.”

Lena blushed. “Kleiny, are you obsessed with him, too?”

“No. I met him once and that cured me. A few years ago a friend of mine was thinking of investing with Bernie. When my pal asked to see a prospectus, Madoff’s people said, ‘Bernie doesn’t do that. It’s a trust thing.’ Please. You know, Lena, there’s a saying, If it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

In fact, Josh Klein had been thinking about Bernie Madoff almost as much as Lena had, but for different reasons. For Lena, Madoff’s business was beside the point; it was his motive, his character that intrigued her. For Klein it was just the opposite.

Meanwhile Lena was having what could only be called an inside-outside experience. She was talking with Klein and passing Vi the salt, while her heart searched the house for Charlie.

Lena looked deep into Klein’s soul. “What about Madoff’s sons?”

“Those two? No question. They did exactly what Daddy told them. Bernie wasn’t a guy who rewarded people for using their brains. Did you know that on the day he turned himself in one of the sons’ wives filed divorce papers?” It had been the talk on the street all week.

Klein refilled his glass. He’d drink until there was no more. And as he drank he was thinking, Boy oh boy, Charlie, get your ass back in here. She’s lonely, lonelier than she knows.

“Kleiny, please.” Lena gave his arm a push. “The wife knows—even if she doesn’t want to know.”

This much Charlie heard. He’d gone upstairs to check on the kids, and come down to get more wine from the garage. He’d been standing in the doorway, behind Lena, long enough to catch the gist. What he heard made him sick at heart. For something indeed had changed: that morning Charlie received a call from someone who could save his faltering company—this man happened to be the one person in the world Lena loathed. Charlie hoped he could explain it to her. But somehow she knew. My god, she knew.

Lena, unaware that Charlie was behind her, kept talking, and in that way dealt with her nerves. She was telling Klein about a woman who got arrested for shoplifting that morning at Whole Foods. “It was terrible. Theo heard the whole thing. The woman, she wasn’t young. Kleiny, here’s the strange part: she was wearing a sable coat.”

“Really? What’d she take?”

“It’s not what.”

“Oh no?”

“Yo, eshes!” Sandy called, rising from her chair. “Charlie, what are those two conspiring about now?”

“Thieves,” replied Klein. “We’re talking about thieves.”

A sable coat wasn’t something you’d expect to see, not even in January, and certainly not on a bright morning at the grocery store.

Motown blasted over the speakers; the aisles teemed with the holiday harried. Some economic downturn, thought Lena, hitching Willa higher in the sling so she was snug to her chest. Lena took Theo’s hand firmly and, hoping to keep him jolly, pretended they were doing a Viennese waltz as she led him into the crush. But as they took a shortcut down the shampoo aisle, the woman in the coat blocked their way.

“Mama,” Theo said, backing up.

“It’s all right, Theo.”

“Yes, little fellow, I won’t bite,” the woman said.

Something about her looked familiar. Lena guessed that her picture had been in the society pages. She had dyed yellow hair and white powdered skin and black kohl drawn under and above her pale eyes. She wore a large sapphire on her middle finger; her nails were frosted pink.

Unlucky, Lena decided, and she squeezed Theo’s hand to keep him from asking one of the questions she knew wanted to bust out of him. Theo wasn’t wrong to wonder. For despite all that glory, something about the woman signaled that she was past the good times. It wasn’t her saggy coat or shoes exactly, and it wasn’t the forced fact of wearing sable on a clear California morning; nor was it the bad dye job or the contrast she made to the young clerks stationed nearby—short, round girls with their nose piercings and tattoos. It was something else. On New Year’s Eve all she had in her basket was a box of pasta, a jar of marinara sauce and a screw-top bottle of red wine. She was studying a jar of cream, no bigger than a large thimble; she held it between her thumb and index finger.

“It’s called Pot O’ Gold, and they want ninety dollars for it,” she said, looking Lena square in the eye. “Can you imagine?”

Lena could. Even as she rolled her eyes, tsking, “It’s a crime, such a crime”—she could easily believe that a pot of nothing cost ninety dollars, and that this woman was going to steal that jar. There are all kinds of thieves in the world, and one sort always knows the other.

From inside the sling Willa coughed, barky as a seal.

“Oh, that bark!” the woman cried. “It’s a sound you never, ever forget. I remember with my middle boy.” Lena could see now that she was older, in her seventies at least. “Dear, have you dealt with croup before?”

“Ah, of course,” the woman said. “Scares the heck out of you, doesn’t it? With my boy, when it got really bad at night, we used to drive him around in the car with all the windows open. The wet air did the trick—calmed him down. Well, it’s always something. Me, I’ve just got to quit being stunned by these prices. And you—Good luck, dears. Happy New Year, all that lala.” The woman waved a jeweled hand as they pressed on.

It was a madhouse at the registers. The lines snaked into the produce aisles and doubled back. Lena and the kids took their place behind two Asian women, sisters no doubt, dressed in leggings and high boots and glossy ponytails that fell down their backs and swished their behinds. To kill time, they were perusing the magazine rack, snapping pages and commenting on the stars, as if they were their old friends. “Look, Madonna. Doesn’t she look better since she left Guy?”

“Hmm. She has excellent skin.”

“Botox up the yinny.”

“And how.”

Their chatter distracted Lena, and it wasn’t until Theo gave a sharp pull on her hand and cried out, “Mama!” that she turned to see the commotion in the Express line.

A security guard had stopped the woman in the fur as she was leaving the store. He demanded that she empty her pockets. Moving ever so slowly, she complied. From the depths of one pocket, she produced a wallet, a bunched silk scarf. Keys.

“Now the other one,” the guard said, opening his palm and wiggling his fingers.

Of course, by now everyone on line was watching—including Theo. Lena looked at her son. Theodore Pepper’s mud-brown eyes were already a bit wild with dark imaginings. Now this. We should all be embarrassed, Lena thought, dread weighting her heart.

It wasn’t the cream after all but a bottle of probiotics.

“Fifty-five bucks,” declared one of the Chinese girls.

“It’s a silly misunderstanding,” the woman explained, her voice unnaturally high. “I put the bottle in my pocket, you see, so it wouldn’t fall out of my basket. I had every intention of paying, of course.” She lifted her chin and sniffed. But despite that little bit of anarchy, the face couldn’t hold. It collapsed. With a world-weary sigh, she searched the crowd for help. “My husband. He needs them for his digestion. The doctor insists, and, well—”

She sighed—the husband, the doctor, all the trouble. “I don’t know what else to say. Honestly, I don’t. You are standing there looking very severe, my fellow. You have to know that I have been an excellent customer since you people first opened these doors.” She seemed to be operating under the assumption that for everyone’s sake this regrettable incident must be put behind them. She looked over her shoulder longingly, toward the parking lot.

The guard held out his palm and once again wiggled his fingers. The gesture was gross and she ignored it, her eyes fixed on the floor.

He dove that large hand into the silk-lined depths of her coat and took out a brick of Parmesan cheese. “Did you think this was gonna jump out of your basket, too?”

“Oh, god,” Lena said.

“Well, I couldn’t be more embarrassed, or feel more stupid,” the woman replied, her shoulders rounding. “No, it’s not possible. You have done your job, young man, no one can blame you for that. Oh, how stupid!”

But the guard didn’t think she was stupid, and he whispered as much in her ear. Her face broke with a fresh horror. “No!” she cried, sagging visibly, as he gripped her elbow, lifting it unnaturally high, and led her, unsteady in her skinny cocktail heels, toward the back of the store.

“Come on,” Lena said, feeling sick inside. She covered her mouth with her hand. Abandoning the cart, she marched them toward the door.

“But Mama—the groceries?”

“Leave them,” she choked. There was nothing certain in Lena’s life, not the bags of ice or the butter, not the credit card on which it would all be charged—not one thing certain, except the lump that was Willa, hung round her neck, and the hot, ardent squeeze of Theo’s paw.

Lena managed to steer them across the parking lot, even as her heart boomed and her legs felt spongy. “You don’t reduce people like that,” she said. “You just don’t.”

When they reached the car, she turned to Theo. He was awfully short and she had no choice but to bend down. This involved a fair act of balancing, what with Willa in the sling and Lena sort of swoony, and Theo himself only a few feet high. Squatting like a sumo wrestler, cursing under her breath, Lena tried to take the worry from her face. There would be no salad at dinner, and without butter the crab would be bone-dry. “Theo, honey. What is it?”

He narrowed his eyes. And weighing his words just like Charlie, his lips moving as he set his thoughts neatly and precisely in a row, he said, “That lady. Are they going to put her in the dungeon?”

“Don’t steal, Theo.” Lena tugged on the bunchy hem of Theo’s jacket.

“I won’t,” he said, pushing her shoulder lightly with his hand. There was something wiggly in Theo’s stomach and his mother was ignoring it. “That lady. Are they gonna … I mean do you think she’s bad? She’s bad, right?”

Squinting hard, Lena tried to think. From the beginning she understood that she didn’t own her children; at best, she hoped to be their worthy shepherd. Besides, Theo had come with his own urgency, an oddball directness, an urgency that had nothing to do with her. Here he was, eyeing her intently, proving that already he possessed all the faces he would ever use in this world—the lover, the worker, the goony bird and, my god, the judge.

“What do you think, Theo?”

“I think most grown-ups would say she’s bad, but you might not.”

Lena smiled. So true, so disarmingly true. She turned away to look across the parking lot. She would have to make it simple for him, to put his mind at ease. For one day soon Theo would know that his mother was also a thief.

Lena Rusch was a thief stealing time.

“Here, Theo. Give me your eyes.”

While Lena and the kids drove home, an hour south of the city, in Mountain View, Lee Swanson padded down the corridor of Nimbus Surgical Devices to look in on the only other soul working that afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Charlie was seated behind his desk, an unpainted door held up on one end by a sawhorse and the other by a chipped file cabinet. The cabinet was several inches shorter than the sawhorse, and so a book entitled Colonoscopic Procedures had been wedged underneath. With the next round of funding they’d get new furniture and Swanson, whose own setup was an L-shaped slab of Formica framed with two-by-fours, had a certain dream of maple burl.

“Hey, Chah-lee, you doin’ any good?”

“I doubt it,” Charlie admitted, the shock apparent on his face, for he thought he’d been alone. Lee Swanson was a house of a man: timber-boned, colossally footed, but he moved through the world in whiffles and whispers.

“Yeah, slow day,” Swanson agreed. “Anyway, I ran the tests with the new cables. Friday, I’ll have the boys jimmy the robot for the umpteenth time.”

Charlie nodded. The robot: the instrument of their dreams, the beast that consumed their lives. Charlie wasn’t thinking about the robot. He had a thornier problem to solve. It had to do with the two irreconcilables in his life: his desire to succeed and his desire to be good to his wife. But not wanting to hurt Swanson’s feelings, he said, “All right.”

Swanson took that as invitation and sat down.

They’d been best friends since college, when both landed scholarships at Harvard. Sinks, toilets and miles of copper pipe had raised Charlie Pepper, a plumber’s son, to the land of guileless trees and isles of pachysandra; of summers cutting lawns and laps in the pool, slow days of mounting ambition, to Harvard. For Lee Swanson it had been South Boston meat. Both would have struggled that first year had the gods of Harvard not seen fit to put them together in a quad inside Wigglesworth with a view of the fabled Square and a brotherhood of unlikelies: Lee Swanson, Lou Papadopoulos, Josh Klein, Charlie. A Swede, a Greek, a Jew and a Pepper.

Behind them were raucous dinners at Grendel’s Den followed by dancing to Little Feat and Earth, Wind & Fire with bright young ladies. There were Red Sox games, scores of them, and the pride that came from years of devotion to a hopeless cause. The Swede, the Greek, the Jew and the Pepper shared an unwavering loyalty, hilarity and an assumption of success. They were, after all, part of a generation of winners, and as such possessed a certainty, hardly imaginable now, that given their education, connections and ambition, they had every reason to expect that with a little luck and a whole lot of push, they would have everything.

Charlie had gone on to become a surgeon while Lee trained as a bio-mechanical engineer. By any measure, they’d done exceedingly well. Yet here they were, starting over again. They had a patent and a prototype for a surgical device whereby, using a robot on one end, fiber optic cables in the middle and a console of instruments at the other extreme, a boy with a harelip in Mbarara could be operated on by a surgeon in his office in New York. The potential, if they could get there, was tremendous. That had to be good, since neither man had slept in a year.

Now Charlie, deep in thought, was grinding his teeth. Swanson stretched his legs out in front of him and waited for his friend.

Their employees called Charlie “Papa”: the old-fashioned great man—ye ole buffalo hunter. In an era when everyone came on too loud too much, saying in effect, Don’t you know who I think I am? Charlie said nothing until he was right. People liked him, even his inferiors, and there were plenty of those, according to Swanson. But he was hard on himself, Charlie was. Already smart, accomplished—a surgeon, for chrissakes—now Charlie had to be brilliant and rich. That, and he had to save all the little children in the world, too.

“So, Chah-lee, there’s like a couple of minutes left to kill in this for-shit year. You want to tell me what’s up?” Swanson, whose Irish mother raised him a Catholic, made a church of his hands.

“Go away, Swan.”

“I’m outta here,” Swanson replied, digging his head deeper into the sofa. He removed a candy bar from his pocket, split it, and lobbed the larger half across the room. “Here, Cap. Lunch.”

Charlie caught the bar and popped it into his mouth, hitting his back molars with a thock. Like spent dray horses, the two men chewed.

“Did you hear the latest with the banks?” Swanson said at last. “Citi, B of A, the whole can of worms. After the inauguration they’re going to nationalize the bunch.”

“Says who?”

“The pundits.”

“Yeah. I don’t buy it. Obama’s got another plan. You’ll see.”

Swanson chuckled. “You think so, Charlie? You think while he’s at it, Obama can part the seas, too?”

Charlie didn’t answer. He seemed scarcely to hear Swanson. But, yes, Charlie believed. He believed with his whole soul that there must be someone, let it be Obama, smart enough, straight enough, wise enough to fix the current quagmire upending the nation. The thought of anything less made Charlie irritable. Moving swiftly, he marched to the window, opened it wide and let the cold air blast him. Swanson was the gizmo-maker, but perseverance, drive, clarity—these were Charlie’s levers. As a surgeon, he lacked the magical hands of the plastic or neuro realms, but was hugely capable with the difficult and bloody jobs. Beginning each morning with the thought I can do better, from that happy challenge Charlie plunged. Women liked him because he listened. He hadn’t thought about his soul in years. He was the kind of man you’d want married to your sister or bucking up your soldiers or guiding the mission to tramp uncharted land, should tramping be required. It was, true enough, but also required were timing, luck, verve.

“This morning I got a call from Cal Rusch,” Charlie said at last. “Seems he’s interested in being the lead investor on our next round. And I’ve been sitting here most of the morning trying to figure out a way to tell the twenty mil we sorely need to go to hell.”

Whenever Swanson was confronted by phenomenon, whether a handsome woman or a gorgeous string of code, he blushed, from his strawberry blond curls down to his wrists. He blushed now. Cal Rusch was one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most savvy venture capitalists, common knowledge. He was also a famous curmudgeon.

“Jesus, Charlie, what the hell’s your problem?”

“One word: Lena.”

“Lena? Come on!”

Charlie nodded, the severe look on his face fading to sorrow as he went on to explain that Cal Rusch was Lena’s uncle. Her estranged uncle. When Lena was a kid Cal Rusch invited her father to put some money in a deal. The deal tanked; Lena’s family lost nearly everything. A year later Lena’s father had a heart attack and died. Uncle Cal sent a wreath, not much more.

Charlie sighed. “Lena’s mom and her sisters, they had a rough time. When it got real bad they had to show themselves at the uncle’s castle and then maybe a few bucks trickled down—all of which Lena took as insult. When we moved back here Lena made me promise up and sideways he’d be the one source we wouldn’t tap. I gave her my word.”

“Sweet Marie,” Swanson said to his hands, meaty as they were, folded primly in his lap.

“Right. And just to put the cherry on it, an old boyfriend of Lena’s works with Rusch. Lena doesn’t know he’s there, but I do. I do. Christ, Lee, what kind of guy would I be, I mean, to put her through—Lena, you know she’s—” Charlie waved his hand.

“She’s every bit that,” Swanson agreed, his crush on his best friend’s wife hardly a secret. “Especially given, I mean, what you guys have been through this year.”

The color drained from Charlie’s face. Not for the world would he put another heartache in Lena’s pocket. Not for the world.

He turned to the window. At the far end of the parking lot, a couple of runt apricot trees stood like tuning forks in the wind. They were all that remained of the abundant orchards that had filled the valley when Cupertino and Mountain View were farm towns. Today, the valley’s cash crops grew indoors, in rows of nondescript office buildings such as this one, where folks like Charlie and Swanson worked feverishly, digging themselves in deep, which was why, in the end, Charlie would accept Cal Rusch’s money, though he absolutely must not.

“And what do you say is Uncle Cal’s motive now? I mean, calling out of the blue and all.”

“His motive? He said a friend at Stanford told him about our trial with that gallbladder in Des Moines. He said that his interest was pure business. But I suspect … I don’t know, this type of guy—maybe he’s after some peace in the later years.”

“Ah, screw him.”

“Yeah, but Swan—” The men exchanged a look that didn’t require words. Two years ago they’d been stars; during lunch at Buck’s they would eat their chicken California sandwiches as one by one the venture capitalists came over to the table to shake hands. But then, last summer, as they were preparing to raise their second round, the bottom fell out. The newspapers were calling it the Great Recession, but in real life it meant that the glad-handing VCs stopped returning Charlie’s calls. By late autumn, funding in the Valley had all but ceased. Nimbus had a few months of capital left, and then the lights went out.

“You should have heard the old man,” Charlie said. “Two minutes in and he’s talking about the patent issues, bang; the software piece, bang—hell, what the other firms took months to see, he got at the first go.” Charlie recalled the gravel in the old man’s voice. It had been easy; Cal Rusch made it so.

“If he mentioned the other guys—”

“Oh, he mentioned Midas right off. He said he had a plan.”

Swanson spread his hands like meat pies across the shelf of his wide-boned knees. “So. We going there, or is he coming to us?”

“My advice, tell her quick, before she reads the thin film of your man-brain. Women can do that, don’t I know.” Swanson climbed wearily to his feet. “Buck up, Charlie. It’ll turn out all right. That, or we’re screwed.” Swanson paused at the door. “OK, see you in a couple of hours. And, hey, in the spirit of things looking up, I bought a new jacket sure to impress the ladies.”

“Oh, god.”

“Yeah, well. Just wait. You heading out?”

An hour later Charlie locked the doors to Nimbus and walked to his car. It had been a year since he left the surgical faculty at Mass General—a year of push. And all that time he’d been gone—in Africa, Boston, or late nights at the office—while Lena managed everything solo. But tonight, they were throwing a dinner like normal folks. A new year, a new president: the papers were full of wild predictions and doom.

Charlie turned on the motor and reached for his phone. He would have to tell her—Sunday at the latest.

Three Stages of Amazement

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Three Stages of Amazement One The modern marriage has two states, plateau and precipice, and in the winter of our recent crisis—with markets plummeting and even rich folks crying poor; with the dark reign of one tinsel president finally ending, and the promised hope of a new man about to start; yes, with hope rising like a cockamamie kite and fear more common than love—Charlie Pepper forgot his wife.

He didn’t mean to. That much Lena knew. She paused at the kitchen sink on New Year’s Eve morning, the last day of the lousiest year of their lives, and considered what she needed and what she knew. The crab needed to come out of the fridge. What about butter? She’d forgotten candles. She needed another bag of ice. It had been a year since they’d even thought about hosting a dinner. Since then the world fell down one black hole and she and Charlie fell down another; as yet no one had come back. But Obama was taking over in twenty days and Lena had hope. She also had a sick baby and no lettuce. And if years ago Lena and Charlie promised that their hearts would always be in sync, well, it was a fool’s promise, wasn’t it? For now their hearts were a cacophony of chuffing and banging, with Charlie’s motor driving like a great battleship and hers a bubbling alchemist’s pot. Then there were the children’s hearts: Theo’s drum sounded like quick boots pounding up the stairs, while Willa’s was more skittish, the flap-flap of gossamer wings. And there was a third heart so silent it took away sound.

“Usted está mutada en el burro, tiene que seguir,” Glo called, on her way out the door after tending Willa half the night so Lena could sleep. “You’re on the burro, you might as well go.”

In quick-fire Spanish, Lena answered, hoisting the baby onto her shoulder. “The burro is strong. Now why can’t he have an extra pair of hands?”

Glo chuckled, her girlish, brown fingers covering her mouth. Seven years ago, Glo crossed the border at night led by a coyote, leaving her two kids and her mother behind in Guatemala. Every Sunday Glo called home, and sometimes her youngest, Rosella, refused to speak to her. Yet here she was talking of Lena’s burros. It was life, this crazy life, and if you didn’t laugh it broke you. It broke you anyway, but it was better if you laughed.

All day Lena made lists and as she carried Willa up the stairs she started a new one. Butter, candles, ice. If, while working feverishly, Charlie forgot her and the kids, it was never for long. He forgot them repeatedly, at moments, across days, in time. Lena, five years younger but dog-aged in matters of love, likewise misplaced Charlie, with all the worry and push she had to nudge up the road. I ought to write it down: butter, candles, ice, she thought, when Willa started coughing again. Lena ran. Charlie was forty-seven, she was forty-two. They had five years between them and eight years of marriage to their backs and to say they were committed was to say they were in deep.

Yet they missed each other.

And Lena wanted—oh, she wanted—to be touched inside her bones. But Charlie was elsewhere—it might be Uganda, or Boston, or an hour south at the office, or asleep in the bed beside her. Dear Charlie, grinding his jaw.

“Theo,” Lena called, grabbing the newspaper as she pushed down the hall on her heels. “I’ll have the door closed. Come find me, honey. Don’t shout.”

She kicked the bathroom door shut and flipped on the shower. As it roared to life, Lena whispered into Willa’s tiny ear, “That’s it, breathe.”

Willa, ten months old, weighed just eleven pounds. In her short life she had been to the hospital a dozen times. With pneumonia, seizures, surgeries, not to mention those four months at the start. The doctors talked gravely of cognitive delays, and worse. Cerebral palsy was a term sometimes used. Lena stopped her ears. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe, it was that believing took her only so far. What Willa needed, Lena felt sure, was time. Lena’s job was to seize time.

As the steam built, Lena first stripped Willa to her diaper, then peeled off her own sweats down to her panties. Making a bed of towels on the tiled floor, she sat—for the first time all morning—with her knees bent, her back against the wall, showing the cabinets her real face, the face she let no one see. Lena Rusch was irreverent, good-looking, plucky. She had a fine if exhausted brain. This meant she couldn’t always recall the lists she made, or the ends and even the middles of her sentences, but she always started out with a bang. She was a romantic and, worse, an optimist. Fate had forced her to be practical and stolid, too. The two sides rubbed. She was crazy for her children, her friends, chocolate, and news of any kind. She might be crazy for Charlie, too, if she came across him in the daylight once in a while. In other words, Lena Rusch was extraordinarily ordinary: she worked and reared and hardly slept; she began each day prepared for a surprise.

Preemies did best skin to skin. Lena laid Willa’s bare chest like a cloth over her own, and making sure her baby was upright with the world, she gently drummed on the tiny back. Willa moaned, burrowing her face in the cave of Lena’s neck. “Sweetheart,” Lena murmured. “Come on, come on.”

“There you are!” Jesse cried, throwing open the door. They were sisters, and though Jesse was much, much younger, they entered rooms as their mother had taught them, like a storm. “I’ve been shouting a lung out downstairs. Theo finally—”

“Shut the door, you noodle! You’re letting out the steam!”

Jesse did as she was told. But between the blasting shower and the stifling heat, she wouldn’t stay long. “What? Is she sick again?” Jesse folded her arms. “Poor pup. Poor you.”

“Nah. We’re fine.”

Technically they were only half sisters. Jesse, sixteen years Lena’s junior, was the product of a love affair their mother had, one of many, after Lena’s father died. She was as long-limbed and blonde as Lena was curvy and dark. Their mother told everyone that Jesse was helping out with the children until she found a job, but Jesse was a child herself.

“So. What are you wearing tonight?” she asked.

Lena tipped her head against the wall and laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Oh, yes.” Lena smiled wistfully. It wasn’t so long ago (in truth, it felt like a minute) that Lena was the one flying out the door to get wasted at high school parties while little Jesse flapped her hands from her bouncy seat. And while that was long ago, Jesse still manipulated like a child—openly, as if she were the only one playing for keeps. Sighing, Lena rubbed circles in Willa’s back. “I gave the black dress to Glo.”

“You what? You gave it to the nanny?”

“Not nanny. Glo.”

“Christ, Lean.”

Truthfully, Lena would have given Gloria Angelica Cardenas anything—anything—for Glo saved Lena’s sanity every single day. And besides, the rapture on Glo’s face when Lena handed her the box was worth a hundred, maybe a thousand, black dresses. Lena looked up at Jesse, trying to decide if she should take the trouble to explain. But Jesse was looking at herself in the mirror, continuing that frank, daily conversation women have with their faces. “Ugh. New Year’s Eve and no guy. I hate my life!”

“Fa.”

Jesse turned. “OK, Miss Veteran. When. When is he going to show up?”

Lena’s grinned slyly. “They always do.”

At last Willa coughed, good and wet. It was enough. Jesse escaped, slamming the door behind her, as Lena put Willa to her breast. They would be there another hour. With one arm hooked under the baby, Lena spread the newspaper across her knees, where the steamy ink would stain her black. She didn’t care. This was the moment she’d been waiting for—her reward being four full pages in the New York Times on Bernie Madoff and his colossal Ponzi scheme. Lena was in awe of Madoff, who, by promising steady returns of eighteen percent, had perpetrated the largest stock fraud in history. He’d swindled at every level, from the Wall Street fat cats, to relatives, to Palm Beach society, to grieving Jewish widows, to the mistress who claimed he had a small penis, to Mort Zuckerman, the media titan, to Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor, to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Yet in the photo on the front page Madoff showed no remorse. He walked the streets, a Jew with a George Washington haircut; he smiled like a shark for the paparazzi.

Her guests arrived all at once. They tossed their coats over the banister and pressed wine and chocolate into Lena’s hands. There was much hugging. Lena made a robust effort to herd them into the living room, but they ignored her, following her into the small kitchen, where they grouped like stupid, happy cows.

“Get the fuck out of here!” she cried, laughing helplessly, but they only smiled and kept on talking. These were the beloveds: Lee Swanson, showing off his new baby blue suede jacket, and Josh Klein, Charlie’s roommates from college, and Sandy, Josh’s wife. When Jesse appeared, having spent the afternoon talking on the phone, tweeting, Facebooking, and smoking a little grass, she made a beeline for Swanson, to tell him that his jacket was his best awful. Laughing, they all agreed.

Meanwhile Lena had four things she couldn’t remember and perhaps one of them was burning in the oven. She was about to check when Vi arrived. Violet Vesuvio, dear Vi, was Lena’s flag of joy, her best friend since they were sixteen, the year they each lost their virginity, one to a girl and one to a boy.

“Oh, god. The fucking traffic.” Vi gripped Lena’s shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “What. What is it?”

Lena wrinkled her nose. It had been a day.

“All right. We can fix this,” Vi said. “Start at the beginning. What have you been eating?”

Lena had a deep, womanly, shit-kicking laugh. “Oh, hi, Maude.” Turning, she greeted Vi’s new girlfriend, who appeared to be in costume, a men’s gray suit and fedora. “You look—”

“Rakish?” Maude tipped her head. Maude was a painter, a decent one; her oversize portraits sold best in Santa Fe and Miami. She was large-boned, mannish, with a small, pretty nose. Vi thought she was tremendous.

“Yes, rakish,” agreed Lena, and though undecided about Maude, she hugged her warmly. Everyone was here; they only lacked Charlie. For the next half hour, as she threw dinner together, Lena kept an anxious eye on the door. And when at last Charlie walked through it, she was so startled she nearly dropped a bowl. She plowed into him, backing them into the hall.

“Well, Doctor, I do like to see your face at the end of the year. Remind me, what’s your name?”

“Lena’s husband,” Charlie said, kissing her quickly. He’d been pushing toward this moment for more than two hours in traffic. But now that it was here, and Lena was beside him, Charlie couldn’t slow his molecules enough to enjoy her. Instead, he dropped the bags of butter, lettuce, and ice she’d asked for on the floor. “Hey. Can I talk to you a sec?”

“Sure.” Lena fiddled with his collar. She was pretending to ignore the gray hollows under his eyes and the smudge on his coat. What she wanted was a good kiss. A good kiss could restore them. Didn’t he know? A good kiss could sail them into the New Year just fine. But even as she longed for this, they headed in another direction—she watched with wonder, seeing them go—and instead of saying something romantic she asked, “Did you get the champagne?”

“Damn.”

“It’s OK. I screwed up on the groceries, but I remembered the booze!”

“Charged it?”

“Course.” She frowned. Now, why ask a thing like that? She shook her head and all but moaned. “Charlie, I want it to be … lovely. One night. Can it be lovely?”

“It is.”

She tried her best to smile. “All right. What do you want to tell me?”

For two hours fighting the traffic on 280, Charlie had practiced his lines. I got a call today, out of the blue. He had his speech ready and there would be no deep kisses until he got the words out. Until he came clean. But the way she was looking at him, with those yearning green eyes, well, you’d have to be heartless.

“You look great,” he said, and meant it. The truth was she looked wan and her hair seemed sort of wild. But even a wan, wild-haired Lena was sweet relief.

Lena patted her hair where Charlie’s gaze landed. Did she really look like hell? She wanted so much from the night. If only desire were enough to take them there. “OK,” she declared, brushing his lips with hers. “The bar first, then I need five chairs.”

Klein wiped his plate clean with a hunk of bread. “God, this is good. Lena, what’d you put in the crab?”

“Butter and butter. A touch of garlic.”

“No, something else.”

“Jalapeño. The thinnest of slivers.”

“Jalapeño! You are a witch, Lena-love. Pass that bowl.”

Lena, because she was nursing, had just the one glass, but it burned nicely in her cheeks and in the tops of her ears. She passed the crab to Klein on her right and the salad to Swanson on her left. Now where was Charlie? She looked down the long table, past the winking candles and rosy faces, to the opposite end. He wasn’t there. The thought of Charlie absent caught in Lena’s throat. And just like that she knew something had happened—something more.

She moved a candlestick aside, the panic rising—as if her heart had been zapped and the ceiling dropped lower. Where was he? From the far end of the table Sandy caught Lena’s eye. Sandy was a gynecologist, not a shrink, but since the twins’ birth she’d made it her business to keep tabs on Lena. Worse, Lena knew from Vi that Sandy believed that had she been the doc on call she could have prevented the twins’ early delivery. It was more than Lena could stand. The hubris. The exposed nerve. It wasn’t only her fatigue or pride that Lena didn’t want poked. It was a question of luck and unluck—and the tenderest, most unspeakable sorrow. It was, finally, a question of the heart. Lena’s heart was tired. And a tired heart is a susceptible one.

“Lena, help me here with Swanny,” called Sandy. “The eshag thinks he can cure a chronic sinus infection with amoxicillin!” Eshag was Sandy’s favorite word—Armenian for ass—but she applied it to all her favorites. “See that, Swanny—Lena agrees. Listen to me, esh: you have to go in there with napalm.”

Lena tried to stand but Josh Klein took her hand and pulled her into her seat. “Don’t even think about it,” he said kindly. In the wife department, Josh Klein considered Charlie one lucky dog. Then, too, with the market down fifty percent and no bottom in sight, Klein had been wondering all evening if this wasn’t the end of the world. He decided that was OK. It was OK if the world ended. He would chat with Lena, drink a little more and see if the forecast changed. Last year he’d brought Lena pots of caviar left over from the Goldman Sachs holiday party. This year couldn’t have been more different. A week before Christmas, he’d been forced to fire half of his department—guys and women he’d brought along. His dreams were haunted by their faces. And so Klein filled his and Lena’s glasses to the top. “Talk to me. Where were we?”

Lena smiled dimly.

“Come on, Helena. Pretend there’s no kids, no worries, sex forever. Money? Well, let’s leave money out of it.” Klein squeezed her hand. “What are you excited about? Is it Obama? Of course you love him. You and everyone are in love. The man is going to kill what’s left of the markets, but let’s not go there either. No, not Obama. Too shiny, too glorified. Let’s talk about a real skunk. Bernie—Bernie Madoff.”

Lena blushed. “Kleiny, are you obsessed with him, too?”

“No. I met him once and that cured me. A few years ago a friend of mine was thinking of investing with Bernie. When my pal asked to see a prospectus, Madoff’s people said, ‘Bernie doesn’t do that. It’s a trust thing.’ Please. You know, Lena, there’s a saying, If it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

In fact, Josh Klein had been thinking about Bernie Madoff almost as much as Lena had, but for different reasons. For Lena, Madoff’s business was beside the point; it was his motive, his character that intrigued her. For Klein it was just the opposite.

Meanwhile Lena was having what could only be called an inside-outside experience. She was talking with Klein and passing Vi the salt, while her heart searched the house for Charlie.

Lena looked deep into Klein’s soul. “What about Madoff’s sons?”

“Those two? No question. They did exactly what Daddy told them. Bernie wasn’t a guy who rewarded people for using their brains. Did you know that on the day he turned himself in one of the sons’ wives filed divorce papers?” It had been the talk on the street all week.

Klein refilled his glass. He’d drink until there was no more. And as he drank he was thinking, Boy oh boy, Charlie, get your ass back in here. She’s lonely, lonelier than she knows.

“Kleiny, please.” Lena gave his arm a push. “The wife knows—even if she doesn’t want to know.”

This much Charlie heard. He’d gone upstairs to check on the kids, and come down to get more wine from the garage. He’d been standing in the doorway, behind Lena, long enough to catch the gist. What he heard made him sick at heart. For something indeed had changed: that morning Charlie received a call from someone who could save his faltering company—this man happened to be the one person in the world Lena loathed. Charlie hoped he could explain it to her. But somehow she knew. My god, she knew.

Lena, unaware that Charlie was behind her, kept talking, and in that way dealt with her nerves. She was telling Klein about a woman who got arrested for shoplifting that morning at Whole Foods. “It was terrible. Theo heard the whole thing. The woman, she wasn’t young. Kleiny, here’s the strange part: she was wearing a sable coat.”

“Really? What’d she take?”

“It’s not what.”

“Oh no?”

“Yo, eshes!” Sandy called, rising from her chair. “Charlie, what are those two conspiring about now?”

“Thieves,” replied Klein. “We’re talking about thieves.”

A sable coat wasn’t something you’d expect to see, not even in January, and certainly not on a bright morning at the grocery store.

Motown blasted over the speakers; the aisles teemed with the holiday harried. Some economic downturn, thought Lena, hitching Willa higher in the sling so she was snug to her chest. Lena took Theo’s hand firmly and, hoping to keep him jolly, pretended they were doing a Viennese waltz as she led him into the crush. But as they took a shortcut down the shampoo aisle, the woman in the coat blocked their way.

“Mama,” Theo said, backing up.

“It’s all right, Theo.”

“Yes, little fellow, I won’t bite,” the woman said.

Something about her looked familiar. Lena guessed that her picture had been in the society pages. She had dyed yellow hair and white powdered skin and black kohl drawn under and above her pale eyes. She wore a large sapphire on her middle finger; her nails were frosted pink.

Unlucky, Lena decided, and she squeezed Theo’s hand to keep him from asking one of the questions she knew wanted to bust out of him. Theo wasn’t wrong to wonder. For despite all that glory, something about the woman signaled that she was past the good times. It wasn’t her saggy coat or shoes exactly, and it wasn’t the forced fact of wearing sable on a clear California morning; nor was it the bad dye job or the contrast she made to the young clerks stationed nearby—short, round girls with their nose piercings and tattoos. It was something else. On New Year’s Eve all she had in her basket was a box of pasta, a jar of marinara sauce and a screw-top bottle of red wine. She was studying a jar of cream, no bigger than a large thimble; she held it between her thumb and index finger.

“It’s called Pot O’ Gold, and they want ninety dollars for it,” she said, looking Lena square in the eye. “Can you imagine?”

Lena could. Even as she rolled her eyes, tsking, “It’s a crime, such a crime”—she could easily believe that a pot of nothing cost ninety dollars, and that this woman was going to steal that jar. There are all kinds of thieves in the world, and one sort always knows the other.

From inside the sling Willa coughed, barky as a seal.

“Oh, that bark!” the woman cried. “It’s a sound you never, ever forget. I remember with my middle boy.” Lena could see now that she was older, in her seventies at least. “Dear, have you dealt with croup before?”

“Ah, of course,” the woman said. “Scares the heck out of you, doesn’t it? With my boy, when it got really bad at night, we used to drive him around in the car with all the windows open. The wet air did the trick—calmed him down. Well, it’s always something. Me, I’ve just got to quit being stunned by these prices. And you—Good luck, dears. Happy New Year, all that lala.” The woman waved a jeweled hand as they pressed on.

It was a madhouse at the registers. The lines snaked into the produce aisles and doubled back. Lena and the kids took their place behind two Asian women, sisters no doubt, dressed in leggings and high boots and glossy ponytails that fell down their backs and swished their behinds. To kill time, they were perusing the magazine rack, snapping pages and commenting on the stars, as if they were their old friends. “Look, Madonna. Doesn’t she look better since she left Guy?”

“Hmm. She has excellent skin.”

“Botox up the yinny.”

“And how.”

Their chatter distracted Lena, and it wasn’t until Theo gave a sharp pull on her hand and cried out, “Mama!” that she turned to see the commotion in the Express line.

A security guard had stopped the woman in the fur as she was leaving the store. He demanded that she empty her pockets. Moving ever so slowly, she complied. From the depths of one pocket, she produced a wallet, a bunched silk scarf. Keys.

“Now the other one,” the guard said, opening his palm and wiggling his fingers.

Of course, by now everyone on line was watching—including Theo. Lena looked at her son. Theodore Pepper’s mud-brown eyes were already a bit wild with dark imaginings. Now this. We should all be embarrassed, Lena thought, dread weighting her heart.

It wasn’t the cream after all but a bottle of probiotics.

“Fifty-five bucks,” declared one of the Chinese girls.

“It’s a silly misunderstanding,” the woman explained, her voice unnaturally high. “I put the bottle in my pocket, you see, so it wouldn’t fall out of my basket. I had every intention of paying, of course.” She lifted her chin and sniffed. But despite that little bit of anarchy, the face couldn’t hold. It collapsed. With a world-weary sigh, she searched the crowd for help. “My husband. He needs them for his digestion. The doctor insists, and, well—”

She sighed—the husband, the doctor, all the trouble. “I don’t know what else to say. Honestly, I don’t. You are standing there looking very severe, my fellow. You have to know that I have been an excellent customer since you people first opened these doors.” She seemed to be operating under the assumption that for everyone’s sake this regrettable incident must be put behind them. She looked over her shoulder longingly, toward the parking lot.

The guard held out his palm and once again wiggled his fingers. The gesture was gross and she ignored it, her eyes fixed on the floor.

He dove that large hand into the silk-lined depths of her coat and took out a brick of Parmesan cheese. “Did you think this was gonna jump out of your basket, too?”

“Oh, god,” Lena said.

“Well, I couldn’t be more embarrassed, or feel more stupid,” the woman replied, her shoulders rounding. “No, it’s not possible. You have done your job, young man, no one can blame you for that. Oh, how stupid!”

But the guard didn’t think she was stupid, and he whispered as much in her ear. Her face broke with a fresh horror. “No!” she cried, sagging visibly, as he gripped her elbow, lifting it unnaturally high, and led her, unsteady in her skinny cocktail heels, toward the back of the store.

“Come on,” Lena said, feeling sick inside. She covered her mouth with her hand. Abandoning the cart, she marched them toward the door.

“But Mama—the groceries?”

“Leave them,” she choked. There was nothing certain in Lena’s life, not the bags of ice or the butter, not the credit card on which it would all be charged—not one thing certain, except the lump that was Willa, hung round her neck, and the hot, ardent squeeze of Theo’s paw.

Lena managed to steer them across the parking lot, even as her heart boomed and her legs felt spongy. “You don’t reduce people like that,” she said. “You just don’t.”

When they reached the car, she turned to Theo. He was awfully short and she had no choice but to bend down. This involved a fair act of balancing, what with Willa in the sling and Lena sort of swoony, and Theo himself only a few feet high. Squatting like a sumo wrestler, cursing under her breath, Lena tried to take the worry from her face. There would be no salad at dinner, and without butter the crab would be bone-dry. “Theo, honey. What is it?”

He narrowed his eyes. And weighing his words just like Charlie, his lips moving as he set his thoughts neatly and precisely in a row, he said, “That lady. Are they going to put her in the dungeon?”

“Don’t steal, Theo.” Lena tugged on the bunchy hem of Theo’s jacket.

“I won’t,” he said, pushing her shoulder lightly with his hand. There was something wiggly in Theo’s stomach and his mother was ignoring it. “That lady. Are they gonna … I mean do you think she’s bad? She’s bad, right?”

Squinting hard, Lena tried to think. From the beginning she understood that she didn’t own her children; at best, she hoped to be their worthy shepherd. Besides, Theo had come with his own urgency, an oddball directness, an urgency that had nothing to do with her. Here he was, eyeing her intently, proving that already he possessed all the faces he would ever use in this world—the lover, the worker, the goony bird and, my god, the judge.

“What do you think, Theo?”

“I think most grown-ups would say she’s bad, but you might not.”

Lena smiled. So true, so disarmingly true. She turned away to look across the parking lot. She would have to make it simple for him, to put his mind at ease. For one day soon Theo would know that his mother was also a thief.

Lena Rusch was a thief stealing time.

“Here, Theo. Give me your eyes.”

While Lena and the kids drove home, an hour south of the city, in Mountain View, Lee Swanson padded down the corridor of Nimbus Surgical Devices to look in on the only other soul working that afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Charlie was seated behind his desk, an unpainted door held up on one end by a sawhorse and the other by a chipped file cabinet. The cabinet was several inches shorter than the sawhorse, and so a book entitled Colonoscopic Procedures had been wedged underneath. With the next round of funding they’d get new furniture and Swanson, whose own setup was an L-shaped slab of Formica framed with two-by-fours, had a certain dream of maple burl.

“Hey, Chah-lee, you doin’ any good?”

“I doubt it,” Charlie admitted, the shock apparent on his face, for he thought he’d been alone. Lee Swanson was a house of a man: timber-boned, colossally footed, but he moved through the world in whiffles and whispers.

“Yeah, slow day,” Swanson agreed. “Anyway, I ran the tests with the new cables. Friday, I’ll have the boys jimmy the robot for the umpteenth time.”

Charlie nodded. The robot: the instrument of their dreams, the beast that consumed their lives. Charlie wasn’t thinking about the robot. He had a thornier problem to solve. It had to do with the two irreconcilables in his life: his desire to succeed and his desire to be good to his wife. But not wanting to hurt Swanson’s feelings, he said, “All right.”

Swanson took that as invitation and sat down.

They’d been best friends since college, when both landed scholarships at Harvard. Sinks, toilets and miles of copper pipe had raised Charlie Pepper, a plumber’s son, to the land of guileless trees and isles of pachysandra; of summers cutting lawns and laps in the pool, slow days of mounting ambition, to Harvard. For Lee Swanson it had been South Boston meat. Both would have struggled that first year had the gods of Harvard not seen fit to put them together in a quad inside Wigglesworth with a view of the fabled Square and a brotherhood of unlikelies: Lee Swanson, Lou Papadopoulos, Josh Klein, Charlie. A Swede, a Greek, a Jew and a Pepper.

Behind them were raucous dinners at Grendel’s Den followed by dancing to Little Feat and Earth, Wind & Fire with bright young ladies. There were Red Sox games, scores of them, and the pride that came from years of devotion to a hopeless cause. The Swede, the Greek, the Jew and the Pepper shared an unwavering loyalty, hilarity and an assumption of success. They were, after all, part of a generation of winners, and as such possessed a certainty, hardly imaginable now, that given their education, connections and ambition, they had every reason to expect that with a little luck and a whole lot of push, they would have everything.

Charlie had gone on to become a surgeon while Lee trained as a bio-mechanical engineer. By any measure, they’d done exceedingly well. Yet here they were, starting over again. They had a patent and a prototype for a surgical device whereby, using a robot on one end, fiber optic cables in the middle and a console of instruments at the other extreme, a boy with a harelip in Mbarara could be operated on by a surgeon in his office in New York. The potential, if they could get there, was tremendous. That had to be good, since neither man had slept in a year.

Now Charlie, deep in thought, was grinding his teeth. Swanson stretched his legs out in front of him and waited for his friend.

Their employees called Charlie “Papa”: the old-fashioned great man—ye ole buffalo hunter. In an era when everyone came on too loud too much, saying in effect, Don’t you know who I think I am? Charlie said nothing until he was right. People liked him, even his inferiors, and there were plenty of those, according to Swanson. But he was hard on himself, Charlie was. Already smart, accomplished—a surgeon, for chrissakes—now Charlie had to be brilliant and rich. That, and he had to save all the little children in the world, too.

“So, Chah-lee, there’s like a couple of minutes left to kill in this for-shit year. You want to tell me what’s up?” Swanson, whose Irish mother raised him a Catholic, made a church of his hands.

“Go away, Swan.”

“I’m outta here,” Swanson replied, digging his head deeper into the sofa. He removed a candy bar from his pocket, split it, and lobbed the larger half across the room. “Here, Cap. Lunch.”

Charlie caught the bar and popped it into his mouth, hitting his back molars with a thock. Like spent dray horses, the two men chewed.

“Did you hear the latest with the banks?” Swanson said at last. “Citi, B of A, the whole can of worms. After the inauguration they’re going to nationalize the bunch.”

“Says who?”

“The pundits.”

“Yeah. I don’t buy it. Obama’s got another plan. You’ll see.”

Swanson chuckled. “You think so, Charlie? You think while he’s at it, Obama can part the seas, too?”

Charlie didn’t answer. He seemed scarcely to hear Swanson. But, yes, Charlie believed. He believed with his whole soul that there must be someone, let it be Obama, smart enough, straight enough, wise enough to fix the current quagmire upending the nation. The thought of anything less made Charlie irritable. Moving swiftly, he marched to the window, opened it wide and let the cold air blast him. Swanson was the gizmo-maker, but perseverance, drive, clarity—these were Charlie’s levers. As a surgeon, he lacked the magical hands of the plastic or neuro realms, but was hugely capable with the difficult and bloody jobs. Beginning each morning with the thought I can do better, from that happy challenge Charlie plunged. Women liked him because he listened. He hadn’t thought about his soul in years. He was the kind of man you’d want married to your sister or bucking up your soldiers or guiding the mission to tramp uncharted land, should tramping be required. It was, true enough, but also required were timing, luck, verve.

“This morning I got a call from Cal Rusch,” Charlie said at last. “Seems he’s interested in being the lead investor on our next round. And I’ve been sitting here most of the morning trying to figure out a way to tell the twenty mil we sorely need to go to hell.”

Whenever Swanson was confronted by phenomenon, whether a handsome woman or a gorgeous string of code, he blushed, from his strawberry blond curls down to his wrists. He blushed now. Cal Rusch was one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most savvy venture capitalists, common knowledge. He was also a famous curmudgeon.

“Jesus, Charlie, what the hell’s your problem?”

“One word: Lena.”

“Lena? Come on!”

Charlie nodded, the severe look on his face fading to sorrow as he went on to explain that Cal Rusch was Lena’s uncle. Her estranged uncle. When Lena was a kid Cal Rusch invited her father to put some money in a deal. The deal tanked; Lena’s family lost nearly everything. A year later Lena’s father had a heart attack and died. Uncle Cal sent a wreath, not much more.

Charlie sighed. “Lena’s mom and her sisters, they had a rough time. When it got real bad they had to show themselves at the uncle’s castle and then maybe a few bucks trickled down—all of which Lena took as insult. When we moved back here Lena made me promise up and sideways he’d be the one source we wouldn’t tap. I gave her my word.”

“Sweet Marie,” Swanson said to his hands, meaty as they were, folded primly in his lap.

“Right. And just to put the cherry on it, an old boyfriend of Lena’s works with Rusch. Lena doesn’t know he’s there, but I do. I do. Christ, Lee, what kind of guy would I be, I mean, to put her through—Lena, you know she’s—” Charlie waved his hand.

“She’s every bit that,” Swanson agreed, his crush on his best friend’s wife hardly a secret. “Especially given, I mean, what you guys have been through this year.”

The color drained from Charlie’s face. Not for the world would he put another heartache in Lena’s pocket. Not for the world.

He turned to the window. At the far end of the parking lot, a couple of runt apricot trees stood like tuning forks in the wind. They were all that remained of the abundant orchards that had filled the valley when Cupertino and Mountain View were farm towns. Today, the valley’s cash crops grew indoors, in rows of nondescript office buildings such as this one, where folks like Charlie and Swanson worked feverishly, digging themselves in deep, which was why, in the end, Charlie would accept Cal Rusch’s money, though he absolutely must not.

“And what do you say is Uncle Cal’s motive now? I mean, calling out of the blue and all.”

“His motive? He said a friend at Stanford told him about our trial with that gallbladder in Des Moines. He said that his interest was pure business. But I suspect … I don’t know, this type of guy—maybe he’s after some peace in the later years.”

“Ah, screw him.”

“Yeah, but Swan—” The men exchanged a look that didn’t require words. Two years ago they’d been stars; during lunch at Buck’s they would eat their chicken California sandwiches as one by one the venture capitalists came over to the table to shake hands. But then, last summer, as they were preparing to raise their second round, the bottom fell out. The newspapers were calling it the Great Recession, but in real life it meant that the glad-handing VCs stopped returning Charlie’s calls. By late autumn, funding in the Valley had all but ceased. Nimbus had a few months of capital left, and then the lights went out.

“You should have heard the old man,” Charlie said. “Two minutes in and he’s talking about the patent issues, bang; the software piece, bang—hell, what the other firms took months to see, he got at the first go.” Charlie recalled the gravel in the old man’s voice. It had been easy; Cal Rusch made it so.

“If he mentioned the other guys—”

“Oh, he mentioned Midas right off. He said he had a plan.”

Swanson spread his hands like meat pies across the shelf of his wide-boned knees. “So. We going there, or is he coming to us?”

“My advice, tell her quick, before she reads the thin film of your man-brain. Women can do that, don’t I know.” Swanson climbed wearily to his feet. “Buck up, Charlie. It’ll turn out all right. That, or we’re screwed.” Swanson paused at the door. “OK, see you in a couple of hours. And, hey, in the spirit of things looking up, I bought a new jacket sure to impress the ladies.”

“Oh, god.”

“Yeah, well. Just wait. You heading out?”

An hour later Charlie locked the doors to Nimbus and walked to his car. It had been a year since he left the surgical faculty at Mass General—a year of push. And all that time he’d been gone—in Africa, Boston, or late nights at the office—while Lena managed everything solo. But tonight, they were throwing a dinner like normal folks. A new year, a new president: the papers were full of wild predictions and doom.

Charlie turned on the motor and reached for his phone. He would have to tell her—Sunday at the latest.

Product Image 1 of 3

A Novel

Three Stages of Amazement

A Novel

A sweeping, richly compassionate novel about marriage, ambition, and the reclaiming of love—by the bestselling novelist and cofounder of Narrative magazine.

Many love stories end in marriage; rare is the love story that begins with one—already promised, already worn. Set in San Francisco during the first year of Obama’s presidency, Three Stages of Amazement deftly charts the struggles and triumphs of Lena Rusch and her husband Charlie Pepper, still believe they can have it all--sex, love, marriage, children, career, brilliance. But life delivers surprises and tests--a stillborn child, an economic crash, a ruthless business rival and the attentions of an old lover. Touched by tragedy and by ordinary hopes unmet, Lena and Charlie must face, for the first time in their lives, real limitation.

Fifteen years after her stunning debut, Rise the Euphrates, Carol Edgarian has created a panoramic and deeply moving story about business and family and the demands of love in our time. She takes readers on a spellbinding journey inside America today, with an unforgettable cast of characters including Cal Rusch, Lena’s uncle, a Silicon Valley titan, and Ivy, his socialite wife, who engender complication in the lives of all the people they touch: their grown children, business partners, friends, the servants and workers upon whom the glamorous life depends--and Lena, whose quest for grace is the pulse of this gorgeous novel.

As Lena and Charlie, Ivy and Cal, face the temptations of their youth and the fantasy of the redo, they discover that real life is the ultimate challenge. Told with eloquence and compassion, Three Stages of Amazement is a true thriller of the heart, a riveting story about confronting adversity, gaining wisdom, and finding great love.

Praise

"Edgarian (Rise the Euphrates) spares no emotion in this big, lovely second novel about decent people falling apart under the demands that there be more than 24 hours in a day and more than parental determination to juggle life's realities against the heart's desire."

"Edgarian (Rise the Euphrates) spares no emotion in this big, lovely second novel about decent people falling apart under the demands that there be more than 24 hours in a day and more than parental determination to juggle life's realities against the heart's desire."

– Library Journal (starred)

"In what may well be the most serious and the most entertaining domestic novel of the year, San Francisco writer Carol Edgarian delivers a new turn on Tolstoy's old chestnut: Happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. She calls her book Three Stages of Amazement and sets it in San Francisco toward the end of the dot com craze. We meet Lena Rusch, an appealing but harried mother of two whose surgeon husband has been trying, with middling success, to found his own medical device company. The novel deftly dramatizes questions about the essence of married life and throws in a mystery about Lena's origins for good measure. But there's no mystery as to how Edgarian keeps us going - deep insight into human behavior, coupled with the right language to describe it... Beautifully written and deeply engaging."

– Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered

"Both an epic love story and a reflection of social anthropology in America today, Three Stages of Amazement is a gracefully rendered narrative of the inevitable joys and heartaches we face in adulthood… Edgarian’s sharp, beautiful prose captures the essence of the human condition in all its pain and glory."

– The Daily Beast

"It’s been 17 years since Carol Edgarian’s best-selling, critically acclaimed first novel, Rise the Eurphrates announced the arrival of a gifted and ambitious young writer. Yet that long pause feels right when you read Three Stages of Amazement, her rueful, wholly adult novel...Edgarian brilliantly evokes the grim daily grind… Superbly crafted, skillfully plotted text… Three Stages of Amazement savors the rich complexity of human beings and the world they negotiate."

– Washington Post

"Lush and elegant… Edgarian is an exceptionally gifted and generous storyteller."

– Associated Press

"Edgarian beautifully captures the fierceness of this mother’s love."

– San Francisco Chronicle

"Refreshingly grown-up, this love story follows a couple as they deal with the economic crash, a preemie, and an old flame showing up at just the wrong time."

"Edgarian returns with another potent tale…. The panoramic view Edgarian provides of a culture and people dealing with change is impressive."

– Booklist

"Edgarian’s novel examines the intricate economies of the modern American marriage... beautiful and as messy and complicated as real life."

– The New York Times Book Review

"Amazement is a rare book -- one that can make you laugh, make you cry, and leave you thinking."

– San Jose Mercury News

"Set in San Francisco, this rich book by Carol Edgarian evokes all the promise inveterate readers invest in the word novel. Portraying the post-blush of love in a marriage weathered by financial crisis, grief, and the humblings of middle age, Edgarian animates real characters and identifiable lives with uncommon generosity."

– Barnes & Noble Review

Read an Excerpt

Three Stages of Amazement

A Novel

By Carol Edgarian

Read by: Anne Twomey

Excerpts

Chapter 1

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Book Reviews

Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide forThree Stages of Amazement includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Carol Edgarian. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

INTRODUCTION

Seventeen years after the publication of her acclaimed debut novel, Rise the Euphrates, Carol Edgarian returns to fiction with the bracingly intelligent and compassionate Three Stages of Amazement. Set in San Francisco as the Great Recession descends upon the country, Edgarian’s novel is a thoughtful and riveting look at modern marriage, with an unforgettable cast of characters. She describes the promises we struggle to keep, the secrets that everyone knows and lives with, and the thousands of small compromises we make to remain a family.

TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Three Stages of Amazement is divided into the sections Silence, Disbelief, and Talk. Discuss what you think Edgarian means by these concepts. How do the characters deal with amazement (in all its forms) and how does that drive much of the plot of the book?

2. In an early scene between Charlie and Swanson, we come across this line: “They were, afte
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About the Author

Carol Edgarian is author of the novels Three Stages of Amazement andthe best-selling Rise the Euphrates, winner of the ANC Freedom Award. Her articles and essays have appeared in many national magazines, and she co-edited the popular collection drawn from great writers' diaries, The Writer's Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame. She is co-founder, editor and publisher ofthe non-profit magazine Narrative (www.NarrativeMagazine.com) and Narrative in the Schools, a program to encourage reading and writing in schools across America. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Tom Jenks, and their three daughters.